Bill Pulte turns over Detroit blight removal efforts to city

Apr. 9, 2014

Bill Pulte Jr., president of the Detroit Blight Authority, at one of the sites the authority worked at on Pierce Street near Eastern Market in Detroit in 2013. Pulte said this morning he's ceasing his blight removal work in the city and turning over his upcoming demolition campaign in Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood to the City of Detroit at the request of city officials. / Eric Seals/ Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Business Writer

Businessman Bill Pulte Jr. said this morning he’s ceasing his blight removal work in the city and turning over his upcoming demolition campaign in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood to the City of Detroit at the request of city officials.

The move is another indication of Mayor Mike Duggan’s efforts to consolidate control of city operations under his direct administration. Duggan has expressed impatience with his inability to oversee many city operations that are controlled now either by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr or quasi-public non-profit boards and authorities.

“I’ve just decided that partnering with them and having them be in charge of this is probably most productive for the entire cause,” Pulte told the Free Press this morning. “I’m happy to do it. I’m going to be available to them, however, if they need help.”

Pulte said his private non-profit Detroit Blight Authority will remain in existence and has begun to consult with other cities, including South Bend, Ind., on their blight-removal efforts.

The immediate impact of Pulte’s withdrawal is that a planned effort to demolish 67 eyesore houses in the city’s Brightmoor district this spring as part of an effort to clean up 21 blocks there will now be turned over to the city’s Land Bank, which Duggan has put in overall charge of blight removal efforts.

Pulte said the mayor’s office may ask his private blight authority to work on cleaning up some vacant lots, but his authority will no longer do demotion of blighted structures.

Announced in January, the planned Brightmoor clean-up was slated to cost between $700,000 and $900,000, paid for with money from donors including the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, the Skillman Foundation and others. Any funds will be redirected toward the city’s efforts, Pulte said.

“We’re going to take a backseat to them,” Pulte said.“The city made it clear they wanted to be the ones doing structural blight removal, and at that point I think it became apparent that it was best to transition it over to the city.”

The city has been demolishing eyesore structures for decades, but beginning last year Pulte’s blight authority brought a new energy and focus to the task by concentrating on single districts for widespread clean-ups. Last year, in his first such effort, his blight authority concentrated on a 10-block area near Eastern Market. The effort helped focus public attention on the problem of blight removal.

“We have learned an incredible amount, I think,” Pulte said Wednesday. “What we’re seeing now is policies that are focused on specific areas. Before we got involved, nobody was talking about concentrated blight removal, scaled demolition, and that’s really what we’ve done.”

He added, “We’re just going to help however we can now going forward.”